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“Discussing about Miriam Makeba in South Africa, it’s like speaking about a royal figure,” states the choreographer. Referred to as the Empress of African Song, the iconic artist also spent time in New York with renowned musicians like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. Starting as a young person sent to work to provide for her relatives in the city, she eventually became a diplomat for Ghana, then Guinea’s official delegate to the United Nations. An vocal anti-apartheid activist, she was the wife to a activist. Her remarkable life and legacy inspire the choreographer’s new production, Mimi’s Shebeen, scheduled for its British debut.

A Blend of Dance, Music, and Spoken Word

The show merges dance, live music, and oral storytelling in a stage work that isn’t a straightforward biodrama but utilizes Makeba’s history, especially her story of exile: after moving to the city in 1959, Makeba was prohibited from South Africa for three decades due to her anti-apartheid stance. Later, she was excluded from the US after marrying activist Stokely Carmichael. The show is like a ritual of remembrance, a reimagined memorial – part eulogy, part celebration, some challenge – with the fabulous vocalist the performer at the centre reviving Makeba’s songs to dynamic existence.

Power and poise … Mimi’s Shebeen.

In the country, a informal gathering spot is an unofficial venue for home-brewed liquor and lively conversation, usually presided over by a shebeen queen. Her parent Christina was a shebeen queen who was detained for producing drinks without permission when Makeba was 18 days old. Unable to pay the fine, she went to prison for six months, bringing her baby with her, which is how her remarkable journey began – just one of the things the choreographer learned when researching her story. “Numerous tales!” exclaims Seutin, when they met in Brussels after a performance. Seutin’s father is Belgian and she mainly grew up there before relocating to learn and labor in the UK, where she founded her dance group the ensemble. Her South African mother would sing Makeba’s songs, such as the tunes, when she was a child, and dance to them in the home.

Melodies of liberation … Miriam Makeba sings at Wembley Stadium in the year.

A ten years back, her parent had cancer and was in medical care in London. “I paused my career for a quarter to take care of her and she was constantly asking for the singer. She was so happy when we were performing as one,” Seutin recalls. “I had so much time to pass at the facility so I started researching.” As well as reading about Makeba’s triumphant return to the nation in the year, after the release of the leader (whom she had encountered when he was a young lawyer in the 1950s), Seutin found that Makeba had been a someone who overcame illness in her youth, that her child Bongi passed away in childbirth in the year, and that because of her exile she could not attend her own mother’s funeral. “You see people and you look at their achievements and you forget that they are struggling like anyone else,” states Seutin.

Creation and Concepts

These reflections contributed to the creation of the show (premiered in the city in 2023). Fortunately, Seutin’s mother’s therapy was successful, but the concept for the work was to celebrate “loss, existence, and grief”. In this context, she highlights elements of her life story like memories, and nods more generally to the idea of displacement and dispossession nowadays. While it’s not explicit in the performance, Seutin had in mind a second protagonist, a modern-day Miriam who is a migrant. “And we gather as these alter egos of personas linked with the icon to greet this young migrant.”

Melodies of banishment … performers in the show.

In the show, rather than being inebriated by the venue’s local drink, the multi-talented dancers appear possessed by beat, in harmony with the players on stage. Seutin’s choreography includes various forms of movement she has learned over the time, including from African nations, plus the international cast’ own vocabularies, including street styles like krump.

Honoring strength … Alesandra Seutin.

Seutin was surprised to find that some of the newer, international in the cast didn’t already know about the singer. (She passed away in the year after having a cardiac event on the platform in the country.) Why should new audiences discover Mama Africa? “In my view she would motivate the youth to advocate what they are, speaking the truth,” says the choreographer. “But she accomplished this very elegantly. She’d say something poignant and then sing a beautiful song.” Seutin aimed to take the similar method in this production. “Audiences observe dancing and hear melodies, an element of entertainment, but intertwined with powerful ideas and instances that resonate. That’s what I admire about Miriam. Since if you are being overly loud, people may ignore. They back away. But she did it in a manner that you would receive it, and understand it, but still be graced by her talent.”

• The performance is showing in London, 22-24 October